Learning New Tricks
I sat in the tiny room they had given me and called an “office” with my head in my hands.
Things had been going well for the first third of the season… then the wheel fell off.
After 10 straight unbeaten, including nine in the league, we’d dropped 3 games in a row. This had immediately put my job in jeopardy. Continue reading “Shelbourne Part 4: Who Cares?”
I opened the door and walked through, ready to head back to celebrating an Irish First Division win with my team. Instead, I found myself in a hallway with my players in uniform on one side, lined up and ready to go out on the pitch. But the the other team was unfamiliar. They weren’t any of the teams we’d played in the First Division, that was for sure.
“Is this some alternate kit for an Irish Premier team?” I thought to myself. We had only played a few of them in cups. Then one of the players turned towards me and I got a look at the badge on the front. My eyes widened as I took in the colors and shapes on it. With the yellow kits, it was unmistakably one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Just six months on from the chairman’s stunning pronouncement to me on the eve of the 2019 season, we were celebrating the first silverware since I’d joined the club, the Irish League Cup in our hands.
The final had been a convincing 4-1 win and we’d beaten two teams from the division above on us on the way there, including our biggest rivals, Shamrock Rovers.
I have a hard time knowing when I’ve hit a peak. Now, I know in life we can’t always recognize these things. We can’t know when the stock market has hit a high and we should get out, can’t really tell when a party has gotten to be the best it will be and it’s time to leave, can’t see that a a job is only going downhill. Although, at least at this point I recognize that usually extending a vacation stay for an extra day typically isn’t smart.
So it was with the Senior Challenge Cup semi-final. I didn’t know it, but that was the high point of the Shelbourne 2018 season. Maybe I should have had an inkling, what with the warm feeling I had of the players embracing me, both figuratively with Murray’s speech before the game and literally after the game, as we basked in the win. Continue reading “Shelbourne Part 5: Strange”
We lost that game. (ed. note: if you’re wondering what game because this is your first time here, check out this post for the beginning of this whole story; if you just want to refresh your memory as to what game, you can look to the bottom of this post)
I looked out over the pitch as the game ended 0-3 to Bray Wanderers. We’d been favored, but had never been able to get our offense going at all and their goals had come spread out, but since we could barely get the ball into their half it didn’t matter.
“It’ll be different when we get back home,” I murmured to myself. At the thought of home, a rush of emotions came up. A few weeks ago I’d left home for work like any other sunny day in Southern California and now here I was, staring across a rainy football pitch in Dublin in February. “It was Valentine’s Day two days ago, I wonder how many Valentine’s Days I’ll have until I see my wife again,” I thought.
So, there I was unconscious on the floor of the dressing room, unlocked memories flooding through my head. If you missed how I got there, read this.
I remembered sitting in my car, feeling that just a few seconds earlier I had been driving through Los Angeles, but now a policeman in a strange uniform was telling me about precipitation levels in Ireland…
I looked out the window at him, then realized with confusion that I was looking to my right. I shook my head to clear it, feeling disorienting.
Continue reading “Can’t Find My Way Home, Shelbourne FC Part 2”
I stood in the dressing room, looking at a group of young men wearing red jerseys. How had I ended up as manager of a football club? Sometimes I felt as though I knew nothing about this game, that I was faking my way through it. But that was just impostor syndrome, I supposed. This must be just nerves.
“Well boys,” I began, looking down at the words I had scribbled down earlier. “The season starts tonight…”
“Dad, the season starts tonight!” I suddenly heard, from a high, familiar voice. I looked up, to see the expectant faces in front of me. All men, the players on my team.
“Uhhhh? Who’s playing with me?” I said to the dressing room. No one moved or responded.
“You’ll be there, won’t you Dad?”
Continue reading “It never rains in Southern California, Shelbourne FC Part 1”
At the time of writing this post, it’s the eve of FM19 proper being released and I’ve been playing the beta. FM19 is the best version of FM I’ve played. That’s not saying much though, since I just started playing the game with FM18. I’m really not trying to damn them with faint praise, FM19 does seem to be a step up in many areas, both in quality and complexity.
FM Old Dog 